The Road To The Stars
'Faster-Than-Light' April 19th 2027 saw the ushering in of a whole new book of history for Humanity with the successful test of the Applied Dynamics Hyper-Dimensional Drive. Utilizing a new model of physics that linked Wormhole Physics and Calabi–Yau manifold, also known as a Calabi–Yau space that finally allowed for an attainable and practical means of FTL travel Applied Dynamics conducted numerous tests until finally announcing the 'Maiden Flight' that took place on April 27th 2027 at 9AM GMT. 'One Small Step For a Rat....' The test flight was notable for being the very first man-made object to leave and arrive in a distant solar system, and carrying a Live Passenger. The first living being from Earth to leave the solar system, and also the first to go FTL and visit a new solar system was the Laboratory Rat named Bailey. The voyage lasted less than an hour, as the test probe departed with a full reserve power supply capable of powering a return Jump if something happened to the main power supply. While this was not needed, Bailey did become the first native of Earth to touch the stars and returned with no ill effects from the 'quick hop' to the edge of the Alpha Centauri system and back after automated sensors and cameras took readings and gave Humanity it's first-ever close-up-look of an extra-solar system. 'One New Leap For Humanity' Almost overnight, the enthusiasm for space travel and exploration exploded to heights never seen before as Humanity now knew concretely that the stars were within reach. The space industry exploded again, new shipyards opened as did new mining concerns in the Asteroid Belt, Mars and the Jovian moons. New Advanced and immense Deep-Range space-based Astronomy stations were built with Optical telescopes whose mirrors measured 100+ metres in diameter and Radio telescopes using clusters of receivers 100+ Kilometres in diameter offering un-parallelled ability to peer into the depths of the Universe and search for worlds that made likely candidates for Colization. Automated drones were sent out by the dozens to explore star systems long thought unreachable and equipped with Quantum-Entanglement Comm systems Real-Time telemetry made the field of astronomy and exploration from a desk-bound Reasearcher perspective considerably more exciting and satisfying. 'Under The Hood...' The Hyper-Dimensional 'Jump' Drive, while relatively 'simple' required precision tolerances in construction. This was made somewhat more challenging in the fact that many elements of the Drive required the ability to move also, and had to maintain those same precise tolerances during operation. This meant that most parts involved in key aspects of the Drive's operation had to be suspended in very powerful, tightly and precisely confined magnetic fields to act as 'frictionless bearings' yet not interfere with the compact particle accelerators and other carefully-calibrated elements that also formed part of the Drive. 'Operation' The HD FTL Drive operates by essentially opening a wormhole on top of/around the ship, but unlike a normal wormhole, this type connects to the destination via Calabi-Yau Space, and aside from a negligible amount of Exotic/Dark/Negative Energy-Mass needed to open it no more is needed to 'stabilize' it as the transit time is a fraction of a Femtosecond and C-Y Space doesn't 'press' on the wormhole's existence with enough force to make collapse of it an issue during such a small time increment. The operation of the drive is tied directly to the Compact Synchrotron Array which is where the Negative/Dark/Exotic Mass-Energy is generated in a complex and precisely-calibrated interaction of multi-vector particle collisions produced by the CSA units all directing their output beams into a single target point with less than 1/10th of an Angstrom's variance. The operation of the Drive requires immense amounts of energy and in fact part of the Drive's key elements in the Secondary System are capacitors that store and supply the necessary power in the short span of time the Drive requires it, on the order of 100 Megajoules/second. This energy is supplied by the ship's reactors through dedicated superconductive feeds, and the Drive recharges over time, as a result, they are rarely shut dow completely aside from necessity for certain aspects of maintenance. Also, the start-up sequece is rather lengthy and it's in addition easier on certain components to simply let the Drive 'idle'. Normally, a Drive can go from 'idle' to Jump-Ready in less than 20 seconds.